hello

Okay so I was HORRIBLE at timing out my emails I hope to get the hang of this call and write change so with the little time I have here are some things from my week. 

Transfer calls came and I will be staying in Siem Reap and my new companion will be Elder Richardson from Mesa, AZ! We have a few mutual friends and he loves basketball so I think that we will get along very well! I am excited for the work that we have ahead of us. Expect Miracles.

We had a baptism this week for my guy, Sothearea! He is a legend and we picked him up as a new investigator the first week I got here and have been teaching him ever since. He was, as they call in the profession, prepared! No matter what we taught him, it seemed to just click with him and make perfect sense. He had no problems and just kept doing all the little things to follow God (stay tuned, more to come). 

After Sothearea's baptism he bore testimony of his gratitude for God.  How before he found God he felt lost, and hopeless. He is a very studious guy (19 years old) and very smart, and he said that all his knowledge didn't give him any purpose or answers. Until he found the Gospel! Now he is full of hope. He is the most smiley dude ever. Because of people like him, everything we do as missionaries is all made worth it. 

The other part of this story comes from the person who baptized him which is this guy named Channy! He is one of my best friends here. When we first came, he was doing okay, coming to church when he was asked, but not making any extra effort. We made a big effort to involve him and get him pumped up about going on a mission and it has been amazing to see the change that has occurred in his life. He is so bold and so happy to be a Christian (even if that means that sometimes he won't be accepted or gets made fun of in his own country). He always gets so excited to help us teach and share the good word. We had him baptize our guy Sothearea and it was amazing and quite the experience. He had never baptized anyone so the first time he finished saying the prayer he grabbed the back of Sothearea's shirt and literally just SLAMMED him in the water. I am talking full on WWE body slam. There literally was a splash zone from the slightly brown water in the font, that got on me. He had to baptism him a few more times with us asking him to, "please do it a little bit softer" and not take him from the "ropes with full force." You gotta love Cambodia.

I am out of time, but I want to end with something that I realized this week while reading a General Conference talk. It is the importance of doing the little things, and especially, the primary answers! Here is what I mean: in primary everyone knows that when you don't know what the teacher said, or you forgot what the question was, or you just flat out weren't listening, you could always resort to saying something along the lines of: PRAY, READ YOUR SCRIPTURES, BE NICE, FOLLOW JESUS, GO TO CHURCH, and you would pretty much always be right. I realized that the primary kids are RIGHT! Even though all the primary answers and the little things seem so redundant I know that if we ACTUALLY DO all those things like; Being kind, reading the scriptures, going to church, praying, and doing all those things with a sincere heart then everything will work out! Everything. 

We don't have to complicate the gospel. We just have to follow God and do the little things that He commands us and he will bless us abundantly! Thanks be to God for the primary children of the world, and may we ever try to do our best to live by their words of wisdom. After all everyone knows, “By Small and Simple Things Are Great Things Brought to Pass”

(Alma 37:6-7) 

I love you all!

Elder Gochnour